A Time For Choosing Speech Analysis

In 1964, one short year after JFK’s assassination, Barry Goldwater ran for President of the United States against Lyndon B. Johnson. Goldwater lost in landslide, coming up short in one of the most lopsided presidential races in American history. At this point, Ronald Reagan was a b-list actor turned tv star, and although Barry Goldwater’s campaign was obviously unsuccessful, it did lead to Ronald Reagan’s monumental “A Time for Choosing” speech and the start of Reagan’s wildly successful political career. In his “A Time For Choosing” speech, Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on a cable tv program to campaign for Barry Goldwater and warn against big government, but more importantly, Reagan addressed the nation to stress the importance of individual liberties and freedoms. Reagan first accomplishes this by creating a separation between himself and the government, using ethos to build himself up as a spokesman for the people against a possibly tyrannical government. Second, Reagan stresses the tangibility of freedom, insisting that it is something that people hold dear, but also something that the current government can take away from them. Finally, Reagan creates an allegorical war to represent the ideological struggle for individual freedom, wherein the …show more content…
Reagan does this by focusing on his ethos and creating separation between himself and the government, stressing the tangibility of freedom in a metaphor that plays on the emotions of the people, and creating a metaphorical conflict where the opposite of individual freedom is physical danger. Reagan’s political theology exhibited in this speech suggest his views on human nature. In Reagan’s obviously libertarian policy and rhetoric, he proposes that humans are innately competent and self